Brain implants could ease growing PTSD epidemic among US service members

A new five-year program launched by DARPA hopes to one day help treat a range of psychiatric conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), using brain implant technology.

The Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has officially announced a
$70 million project that could produce technology to combat
depression, anxiety, and other common conditions found among US
service members that have seen combat in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

"We've seen far too many times where military personnel have
neuropsychiatric disorders and there's very few options,"
Justin Sanchez, a program manager with DARPA, told NPR.

Researchers at the University of California San Francisco, along
with Massachusetts General Hospital, will be looking at brain
implant devices that can both monitor and electrically stimulate
the brain.

The goals of the program are an extension of a White House
initiative announced by President Obama to explore the human
brain. That project, known as BRAIN (Brain Research through
Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies), announced by Obama last
year, directed Congress to earmark $100 million in 2014 to
"better understand how we think and how we learn and how we
remember."

Brain implants capable of stimulating neurons are already in use
for patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease and other neural
conditions, NPR reported. What DARPA proposes in its new pilot
program, however, represents significant advances in implant
technology.

If successful, DARPA’s research could help tackle a significant
issue within the US veteran community. According to the
Department of Veteran Affairs (VA), PSTD is currently believed to
be experienced by 11-20 percent of vets of the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars (Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom).

By comparison, the VA says that a staggering 30 percent of
Vietnam veterans are suspected of having suffered from or still
being treated for PTSD.

Scientists will begin their research by monitoring the brain’s
interaction with existing brain implants in real time. Once they
understand how the technology interacts with the body, they will
begin to create small electronic implants that can stimulate
neurons in so-called faulty brain circuits.

"We know that once you start putting stimulation into the
brain, the brain will change in response," said Eddie Chang,
a neurosurgeon at UCSF.